What’s the real cost of running brand and performance marketing as separate teams? It is more than most marketing leaders want to admit. When every dollar is judged on last-click conversions, you’re capturing existing demand while the pipeline of future customers dries up.
I sat down with Jon Chang from MyFitnessPal, the category-leading nutrition app now inside ChatGPT Health, to break down how he runs brand and performance marketing as one system. Jon shares how his team runs roughly 700 creatives at once and tests new messaging for just $100–$300 a week.
He also explains how moving off a single-message influencer strategy took CAC from break-even to about 30% below it. You’ll walk away with a framework for persona-based creative, a test budget that protects your LTV/CAC math, and a smarter way to measure brand performance with incrementality.
In this episode:
- Why last-click attribution and performance-only marketing run out of demand
- How Meta’s Andromeda update rewards creative diversification
- Running multiple creatives to build brand differentiation and lower CAC
- How to measure each funnel stage with brand lift and last-touch
- What GeoX incrementality studies reveal about true channel credit
- MyFitnessPal’s influencer strategy and media mix
- How Klarna builds micro-communities and campus activations
Mentioned in the Episode:
Partner with Tier 11’s marketing experts: http://tiereleven.com/apply
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Connect with Jon Chang:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchangny
Connect with Ralph Burns:
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- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
The Unified Marketing Strategy Behind MyFitnessPal’s 220 Million Users
00:00:00:03 – 00:00:21:02
Jon Chang
I need to create demand for the future using brand and then capture it using our performance marketing. And so when organizations are just too focused on performance marketing, what ends up happening is you’re optimizing and converting that existing interest. But that’s going to run out every time.
00:00:21:04 – 00:00:34:05
Ralph Burns
What would you recommend? Brands that are very performance based still sort of think about kill the ads that don’t get the last click conversion because they don’t do anything.
00:00:34:06 – 00:00:43:02
Jon Chang
I think it’s actually a little more straightforward than what people might think about.
00:00:43:04 – 00:01:13:16
Ralph Burns
Hello and welcome to the Professional Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns Burns, founder and CEO of tier 11. And we’re trained to build brand and performance separately at a very early age in our marketing careers. And those two teams oftentimes don’t necessarily work together. Well. Today’s show, we’re going to solve that, but we’re going to also discuss how you do both in concert with each other so that they work to grow the brand.
00:01:13:20 – 00:01:52:09
Ralph Burns
And we are very excited to have Jon Chang Chang here today from my fitness pals, a category leading nutrition tracker, premium subscription founded in 2005. I can’t believe it’s been around for that long because I used to be a user and prepping for this episode. Now I’m going to have to be using it again. They’ve got 268 employees. They’ve been in business a long, long time, and they’re inside ChatGPT Health starting back in January of this past year, and they’re exposed to roughly 800 million ChatGPT users moving brand discovery from search results to AI answers to huge strategy for them today.
00:01:52:11 – 00:01:58:20
Ralph Burns
Jon Chang Chang, very excited to have you on today’s show to talk about brand and performance. Welcome to Perpetual Traffic.
00:01:58:21 – 00:02:03:08
Jon Chang
Hey, thank you Ralph Burns. I’m really excited to be here to talk all things marketing.
00:02:03:10 – 00:02:37:16
Ralph Burns
So one of the cool things about having you on the show is that I think a lot of the listeners to this show are more performance marketers than they are brand marketers, but you own both and you’re the category leader. I mean, I don’t know if there’s another app in your space that’s bigger, more popular. And I think your argument, especially from a lot of the social posts, a lot of the things that we’ve read online is that a lot of organizations build these two sort of separately, and it might be the most expensive line in the org chart as a result, because they don’t necessarily work together.
00:02:37:17 – 00:03:01:13
Ralph Burns
We’re going to talk about that here today. So this is a really interesting question for a lot of c’mon, CEOs, directors of marketing of growth, how do you actually merge the two of them together? What’s your world view of brand versus performance? Or even, as meta likes to say, brand formants, which I don’t think they actually even engineers invented that.
00:03:01:13 – 00:03:06:11
Ralph Burns
They just stole it from somebody else. So what are your thoughts on the two sides of the equation? How do you bring them both together?
00:03:06:12 – 00:03:29:02
Jon Chang
I mean, we’re structured pretty well, but then also we have the right mentality. So I think that brand in general, if we’re going to just look from a high level, focusing on brand helps you really be successful 3 to 5 years from now. And then when you look at the like, what performance marketing actually does for an organization that helps you get to tomorrow successfully.
00:03:29:02 – 00:03:57:08
Jon Chang
And that’s why they’re measured differently. Oftentimes they’re made in like silos. But I need to create demand for the future using brand and then capture it using our performance marketing. And so when organizations are just too focused on performance marketing, what ends up happening is you’re just optimizing and converting that existing interest. But that’s going to run out over time.
00:03:57:08 – 00:04:21:20
Jon Chang
And so the the overall kind of user and market flywheel, when you’re trying to get higher and higher percentage of Tam isn’t going to work when you’re only using performance marketing and then separately, if you’re really focused on just brand, sometimes that works. I mean, when you’re an IT or an Apple or like insurance company where you know someone is going to purchase at some point during their lives and you want to be top of mind.
00:04:22:01 – 00:04:47:05
Jon Chang
Awesome. However, most organizations can’t do that. So when you’re just focusing on brand, you’re losing out on generating that revenue, which gets you to that 3 to 5 years from now. And so I think when you really are looking at holistically the total addressable market and how you want to increase your percentage, but then also capture what’s in there, you need to think about those two holistically.
00:04:47:05 – 00:05:14:02
Jon Chang
And so also as we are structured, I think that our CMO has done a good job just thinking about how my role and as also an example, our VP of comms, we’re splitting up brand and performance here. We kind of both toe the line with each other. Our comms person who is phenomenal. Like one thing that I think she’s owning far more than myself is our positioning.
00:05:14:02 – 00:05:36:12
Jon Chang
And that’s a 3 to 5 years from now. So for us, one interesting thing about being a brand that’s been around so long is we have gone through every fad, every trend. I mean, the I bulls like don’t eat eggs, do eat eggs like things that are even that minute. And so we have a product feature that is suitable for everyone.
00:05:36:13 – 00:06:00:01
Jon Chang
Like if you are interested in health and fitness, come to the app and there will be something for you. However, that makes marketing, especially on the brand side, harder and harder and harder to do even on the performance side too. And so she’s really helping. Like, what is the positioning? And for us, we’re focusing on no matter what the trend or fad is or what your goals are, nutrition comes first.
00:06:00:01 – 00:06:24:04
Jon Chang
And that, as a concrete example, is something I can take into a foreman’s marketing. And I’m going to zoom out a little bit as upper funnel to those are things that I can execute and always on CTV in podcast, and then figure out how to cohort those into actionable and more persona or cohort driven performance marketing, such as campaign.
00:06:24:04 – 00:06:26:13
Jon Chang
We’re about to launch just for NCAA athletes.
00:06:26:13 – 00:07:04:12
Ralph Burns
So we talk a lot about meta recently and the Andromeda update and I it really has I think one of the things that’s super interesting for us. I mean, we’re primarily as an agency looked at as a performance marketing agency, but I think it has done an incredibly great job of bridging the gap between performance and brand, because you can do both at the same time, because the content, the video content, specifically creative diversification, all of that sort of stuff we’ve talked about on this show so many times does create a tremendous amount of brand differentiation.
00:07:04:12 – 00:07:24:21
Ralph Burns
And for those businesses that are very like stuck on the, hey, I’ve got to have my pay per click high value keywords on Google, and I’m competing against everybody else. You never really. That’s one of the things that we talked about years and years ago. You’re never creating a brand that way. You’re actually just competing against like the lowest price in the market.
00:07:24:22 – 00:07:56:10
Ralph Burns
If it’s refractory depression treatment or if it’s high end, you know, luggage or whatever it happens to be, whatever that keyword is, you’re just competing against everybody else. Whereas now with meta and we’ve seen this incredibly from a performance standpoint, you’re creating brand alongside performance. Like they almost are like merging back together because so many conversations I’ve had with CMOs and and marketing are like they’re like, well, which had is it the one that’s working?
00:07:56:12 – 00:08:15:01
Ralph Burns
Like getting the performance of all of them, because you’re creating a brand, you’re actually making differentiation and there’s performance alongside of it. What are your thoughts on that? Because I know we talked a little bit about meta TikTok. A lot of folks, I think that listening to the show are probably adapted both of those platforms into their marketing mix.
00:08:15:03 – 00:08:38:12
Jon Chang
I have a lot of thoughts, but no, it’s yeah, Andromeda is a really interesting thing. I mean, depending on who you ask, it’s interpreted a little bit differently, even their meta reps. But at the end of the day, I kind of think about it in two different scopes. One from a I’m performance marketer. I do want to get like the best LTV immediately.
00:08:38:14 – 00:09:02:09
Jon Chang
That’s a high volume play and of creative. So and that then leads itself into the second part, which is I love Ted Lasso. And so I will make too many references, but out of context, there’s this essentially a quote about how he runs team and, and he finds success by making tiny like dozens and dozens and dozens of tiny, imperceptible moments.
00:09:02:09 – 00:09:25:18
Jon Chang
And that’s one way you can use performance marketing through Meta and Andromeda to help build your brand, because these are people who are going to have multiple impressions of the same or different kinds of ads. Again, it’s like your persona of Tam is like only going to be so big, especially as you’re like scaling your spend. And so that’s how you end up like building that brand using performance marketing.
00:09:26:00 – 00:09:50:18
Jon Chang
So I’ll give you more of a concrete example here. So the way that we think about optimizing for like Andromeda or applying the to TikTok as an example, is I’m not going to predict what’s going to happen on the internet. And it’s also never going to be something where they’re always brand new. The trends are cyclical, like that’s why you have things where it’s like fashion is also retro, but slightly different.
00:09:50:18 – 00:10:16:17
Jon Chang
So the way we think about optimizing for Andromeda is at the base on what a meta recommends, and that is being a little more persona based. So we’ve made different modes and that dictate what kind of creative we make and the variations. And that’s like we have restart mode. People who have tried to get back in shape or and failed, or people who are getting back in shape for second or third time.
00:10:16:18 – 00:10:47:21
Jon Chang
I mean, maybe it gets interrupted. That happens. It’s just life. We have urgency mode. Maybe you need to look really hot for the summer. I think all of us have been there every now and then and we have overwhelm mode. There’s way too much information, too many apps and things like that. So we start there and then we go into where I think many performance marketers actually start optimizing the creative, which is almost like a race to the bottom, and that is what product features of the showing or what kind of proof point.
00:10:47:21 – 00:11:17:01
Jon Chang
We have 2 million users or whatever that ends up being. So we don’t that is supplemental in our overall creative strategy. So when you start with a persona and someone who is looking to get hot really soon, so urgency mode and then you’re layering on your product features and your proof points, you start to make dozens and dozens of different kinds of variations of the same value.
00:11:17:01 – 00:11:44:12
Jon Chang
And then as those are in market, like I’m saying, you’re multiplying the impressions. You’re making all these tiny, imperceptible moments as people are scrolling, doom scrolling, let’s say, throughout their day. And that works really well. We, on average have about 700 creative running at a time. And if you. Yeah. So and and that’s been a big change in the way that we ran performance media maybe even just a couple of years ago at least right before I started.
00:11:44:12 – 00:12:07:00
Jon Chang
And the interesting thing is, if you look at a chart and it shows the total amount of impressions or conversions per creative that’s run, it’s it’s going to change over time. And the creatives that may have been launched a year ago might get a larger percentage share, because all of a sudden, food swaps with what I eat in a day are greatly trending again.
00:12:07:00 – 00:12:35:07
Jon Chang
And I wouldn’t have predicted that. That’s just something where we need to be prepared, which a large enough swath of content structured in a way that’s optimized for the platform persona at first, so that we are prepared for whatever kind of way the internet is going to react. And that sounds defensive, but it’s really an offensive strategy and that builds your it helps with your TV, but it also builds your brand by using performance media.
00:12:35:13 – 00:12:37:04
Jon Chang
Yeah, yeah.
00:12:37:04 – 00:12:58:00
Ralph Burns
That’s a the trend part of your business is a really interesting aspect of it. It’s like you almost have to I don’t know if you can anticipate trends necessarily when you’re putting together your creative briefs and so forth. I mean, nobody can really nobody could like, visualize years ago that the hot dog diet would be a thing or the popcorn diet or whatever, you know, whatever the heck it is.
00:12:58:00 – 00:13:22:17
Ralph Burns
Like the diet. Sure. The point is, this is like you’ve got such a diversity of creative that fluctuates as far as performance is concerned, almost at a daily and weekly basis, which is a dynamic I think a lot of businesses probably don’t have to deal with to a certain degree, which means you need even more creative. 700 creative running at any given point in time is certainly a lot.
00:13:22:18 – 00:13:47:00
Ralph Burns
So when it comes to performance and reporting and which you have coworkers, you’ve got a CMO as a boss, I assume you report up then like how do you sort of separate it out, like where the lines being drawn between brand, which we’re talking two, three, four years from now, and performance, which is this week, next month, today.
00:13:47:01 – 00:13:55:08
Ralph Burns
Like how do you separate that out from a reporting and a performance standpoint to say, all right, well, this is the right balance. This is the right mix, all of that.
00:13:55:12 – 00:14:16:10
Jon Chang
Yeah. Well we actually have quite the rigor in analytics now. And it took a bit to set up. So we of course use last touch attribution like a lot of organizations do as a mobile app. We’re using our MMP to measure that. However we I mean you’re breaking down the different parts of the final and you’re breaking down to the different parts of the funnel and their actual purpose.
00:14:16:10 – 00:14:37:18
Jon Chang
So upper final, we’re measuring brand lifts and recalls. Then we have mid funnel and we’re measuring the different kinds of considerations. And then bottom of the final of course like that’s more of the like last attribution. So if I were to just kind of like say it and summarize it, overall we are running a lot of geo incremental studies.
00:14:37:18 – 00:15:07:01
Jon Chang
That is the way that everyone should be running it, even if you’re not doing as much brand, because essentially what it’s what we’re doing is we’re trying to figure out what type of credit each of these and channels is actually attributed to take, because your last touch is generally not super great. So we work, we’re generally running our Geox across across channel by channel, and then within each platform we’re actually running power and brand lift studies as well.
00:15:07:01 – 00:15:31:13
Jon Chang
So when we end up combining that, you can’t just say you can run them by the different channels through the platforms, but it’s it’s kind of like that machine. What you put in that takes the quality of what you put out and what you’re putting in here is the overall creative and the alignment of the messaging. So if you’re putting in messaging on your brand side, that is not aligned really.
00:15:31:13 – 00:16:04:02
Jon Chang
So let’s say the positioning aligned with what you’re executing on the bottom of the final or middle of the final, then your studies will be directional by they really want help you make better decisions. So like as we execute geo incremental studies, brand lift brand and power lift. And that helps us with the consideration. But the actual function of it is being highly strategic about which GEOs or channel, as well as the creative that’s being put in for the positioning.
00:16:04:02 – 00:16:08:13
Jon Chang
It speaks to you and the messaging that’s actually like literally on top of it.
00:16:08:15 – 00:16:33:02
Ralph Burns
So what would you recommend to brands that are and there’s a fair amount of them that listen to this show that are very performance based, still sort of think about, okay, well, you know, kill the ads that don’t get the last click conversion because they don’t do anything, you know, which is just still pervasive in the world that we live in to this day.
00:16:33:02 – 00:16:51:08
Ralph Burns
Maybe not so much for brands like yours, because as they’re a little bit, shall I say, a bit more mature as opposed to very sort of short, a little bit short sighted. We tend to have a lot of that that that does occur. But that’s okay. These are businesses that are every dollar counts. I can’t think about 3 to 5 years from now.
00:16:51:08 – 00:17:13:10
Ralph Burns
I’ve got to think about making payroll this month, since a lot of business owners that sort of think that way, or CMOs and so forth. How do you sort of balance the two when you’re sort of breaking out of that? And I don’t know if you can even sort of think back because obviously you guys have been around for quite some time now, but like, how do you break out of that mindset of like, oh, last click attribution is everything.
00:17:13:11 – 00:17:35:05
Ralph Burns
And but I sort of see this Andromeda thing, I see CTV, I see programmatic, I see all this and everyone’s doing it more and more. But, you know, that just seems like a waste of money to me. How do you get people to like when you speak as a keynote? Like, how do you get folks to sort of understand that difference and that shift in mindset over time?
00:17:35:07 – 00:17:57:03
Jon Chang
I mean, it’s I think it’s actually a little more straightforward than what people might think about. I mean, we reinvent our marketing quite regularly because it’s if the platforms reinvent the way that we have to use them, then we just need to catch up. And so we actually, I think is this week are launching our new strategy for deploying performance media.
00:17:57:03 – 00:18:22:12
Jon Chang
And here’s the thing, as a product, also the category changes like you’re saying. And so now it’s it’s kind of like product marketing with performance marketing I know brands over here too been talking about that. So we every organization should have a test budget and they should have a business as usual or an evergreen budget. That’s by default easier said than done, because it’s like, how do I actually use my test budget?
00:18:22:12 – 00:18:45:08
Jon Chang
So part of ours is and we’re calling them tracks as this new part of the ad strategy, we know again, like kind of that positioning that we want to have, and we also know like what kind of product offerings that we have. So we have launched a product offering called AI coach. You go into the app and then you ask it any sort of question.
00:18:45:08 – 00:19:04:20
Jon Chang
It’s like, and this is where NCAA athletes are saying I this is what I had for lunch, but I have a big practice coming up. What’s another way I can fuel without like overloading? It’s the AI coach will answer these things very succinctly for you, going into market with an ad and just showing an AI coach. We’ve done some testing.
00:19:04:20 – 00:19:26:03
Jon Chang
We can probably get it to work for a subset of users, but it’s not necessarily for everyone. And so we’re testing instead My Fitness Pal as a coach, as a value message. And then leading into the product feature. That’s our current hypothesis about what would work best because we totally failure. But that’s why you make hypotheses. There’s there’s a null value of course too.
00:19:26:05 – 00:20:00:18
Jon Chang
So those are the those are two things that are in what I’m talking about as a track and is deployed in a overall testing budget. So if you’re a performance marketer and you’re like, well, I got to make payroll tomorrow, like you should be able to do your TV and say, we can spend ten or like five, ten, $70,000 this month just figuring out a message that has not worked well but is core to your positioning and then also core to a product feature that will be revenue, highly revenue generating.
00:20:00:18 – 00:20:24:01
Jon Chang
And you put that into the equation about LTV because you’re going to assume there’s an increasing conversion rate. So you’re looking you actually have a larger margin for what you can make back. And then you test all that creative in there in the way that I’ve been talking about with the large swaths, persona based and so forth. But we’re making a bet in these tracks that something is going to win.
00:20:24:02 – 00:20:52:19
Jon Chang
We’re just giving ourselves time by allocating spend that’s going to be inefficient for a little bit. So that’s like how we think about it as a performance marketer. Think about the positioning. And if you’re like not quite sure or you’re like, I don’t really know what it is, maybe that’s too far in the future. Also, then look at your product features, talk to the product team, maybe the PMS about product features that are highly revenue driving or have a higher conversion rate or they are working on which will have a higher conversion rate because you can actually measure those.
00:20:52:22 – 00:20:58:03
Jon Chang
You can put that into your TV equations. And that’s hard math, right?
00:20:58:05 – 00:21:26:03
Ralph Burns
Yeah, I think a lot of folks are are reluctant to do that type of test in many cases, because it’s doesn’t necessarily give a return in the short term. So it’s a it’s a reluctance that I’ve seen in a lot of just we just want to stick with what’s working right now, not try a different track. However, if it’s related, like this is a different sort of thing.
00:21:26:03 – 00:21:58:10
Ralph Burns
You’re also launching a new feature it sounds like, and you want to be able to test the viability of that feature. Should we market that to the wider audience? Maybe for the college athletes, it’s a really it’s a subset persona within an overall marketing like pillar that you could that could sort of dominate your full fledged marketing. So it’s that test budget is incredibly important, especially if you’re even if your hypothesis is wrong, which, you know, you know, as marketers, it’s like the majority of the time we are wrong.
00:21:58:12 – 00:22:17:13
Ralph Burns
That’s just the way that it is. But it’s like thinking in those terms, I think gives longevity to the brand. It might not pay the payroll that month, but you’re thinking more longer term as you grow and you expand from a performance standpoint, but also you’re building brand and differentiation at the very same time.
00:22:17:15 – 00:22:39:21
Jon Chang
Yeah, I mean, I don’t have children, but I have nieces and there’s something that happens with kids and it’s a and I honestly, I am one of the more stubborn people that most people meet, unfortunately. Why there’s something where I’ll be like, oh, you know, that is going to have a negative consequence. And they’re like, sure. And then they do it.
00:22:39:23 – 00:23:13:09
Jon Chang
There’s a negative consequence. And like you, there are so many organizations in nearly everyone, every one of these that is now established. And I’m like, if you’re not, if you are not as a performance organization within these kinds of companies, pushing your messaging in partially an inefficient way, you’re going it’s a race to the bottom. Again, you are capturing existing demand, and that’s going to end up running out.
00:23:13:10 – 00:23:37:13
Jon Chang
I mean, a tale that when I first started here, the people before me were doing a just fine job that we were running. We were working with influencers, but a small subset of them and watching them, and we had about 17 creative live at a time. So we were paying tens of thousands of dollars for these mid-tier creators, which on average is a price for a mid-tier creator.
00:23:37:13 – 00:23:55:04
Jon Chang
And then they would make content, and then we would kind of like splice it up. Our CCaC was at break even, which is awesome, and we love that. However, it was repeating the same message every single time. It was primarily focused on just what I eat in the day, and that’s awesome. However, I mean special in our category, things change.
00:23:55:04 – 00:24:34:08
Jon Chang
So with this new strategy, we’re on average about 30% below break even. And and that took a while. We launched our we launched our this kind of like whole strategy I’ve been talking about in October of 2025 that as a soft launch, the actual launch, which we called 1.0, launched in February, and it took, I don’t know, 4 to 6 months just to best understand the actual permutations of our brand messaging as applied to the creative and performance marketing, and that’s where things have just kind of taken off since then.
00:24:34:08 – 00:24:59:16
Jon Chang
And so, all right, I really believe in it. And I’m not calling anyone a child. But if we if we’re having a hard time with it, just like, look, there’s a bunch of cautionary tales, you can also try and find organizations that have dropped out of their category because let’s just say even demographically, your core users are going to get older.
00:24:59:16 – 00:25:31:00
Jon Chang
That is like just what’s going to happen. And then look at Nike. They literally burned part of their older demographic to capture the younger one. And that’s an investment that you’re just going to have to make if you’re looking at the longevity, your business. So maybe you’re a marketer and thinking that way. But if you’re talking about cross functionally, go talk to your CFO or your CEO, like if and say, like, I don’t have the budget to run these tests, but if we do, we’ll be more successful, like 5 or 10 years from now.
00:25:31:01 – 00:25:34:00
Jon Chang
Like, I think that’s a very reasonable conversation.
00:25:34:05 – 00:26:06:05
Ralph Burns
Super interesting that you pivoted from sort of a single message of like, what do I what did I eat today? Or what do I eat today? Let’s just say like that’s one pillar, one messaging pillar, and then the the. But that gets you to a certain level of success. And I’ve talked to I do a lot of traveling to go out and meet our clients face to face and see like that being so common is, hey, we’ve got this thing.
00:26:06:07 – 00:26:36:22
Ralph Burns
We’re going to just show it the same way, doesn’t matter what. But now we’re flat. Now we can’t grow anymore, or now we’re declining or our is increasing and Mur is coming down, or Roas on our ads and all that sort of stuff. So performance starts to degrade at a certain point in time. When you came in, it sounds like this was a sea change in changing like a diversity strategy for not just influencers, you know, on the same message, but also the brand in general.
00:26:37:03 – 00:27:03:04
Ralph Burns
Like you’re talking about 700 creatives. Like that’s a lot of different messaging. How did you, you know, convince the higher ups and your boss and within the organization and you’re sort of part of this movement to be able to do this, like diversification of message. How did that get sold, I guess, and how did you convince that? And I’m talking to a director of marketing is probably in the same situation that you are like, yeah, that’s exactly me.
00:27:03:04 – 00:27:11:17
Ralph Burns
And I can’t get like my CEO to buy into the fact that we should start doing something differently in our messaging. How do you buy people into that whole concept?
00:27:11:19 – 00:27:37:04
Jon Chang
I mean, it’s testing and measurement that it’s and it’s transitioning out of it isn’t overnight anyway. You’re going to screw up your account. And then because the algorithms are going to be really mad at you for making too many changes. And so, I mean, it’s it’s not like an 8020 rule. I don’t really believe in that. There’s a good enough for, for statistical significance to run a test.
00:27:37:05 – 00:28:00:01
Jon Chang
We actually run a new creative test every single week with a different permutation of those messages across for creative. And on average, each test is about 100 to $300. It is not a lot and that. So we are microdosing messaging tests that that is what’s happening. And it’s not bad to be formulaic. I mean look at Marvel. They just pump out the same thing every single time.
00:28:00:01 – 00:28:25:13
Jon Chang
But we love it. So I mean, we have a formula for testing. It is highly inexpensive. And then we take the winners of each week’s test, make a couple new variations of it, and then put it into our evergreen campaigns. So like, if you’re going to end up doing this kind of strategy, if you can make Ford eight ads every week, I mean, look at like Astra that is here.
00:28:25:14 – 00:28:50:10
Jon Chang
Like, I know, like there’s AI platforms you can do yourself. Honestly, I used to do a design for social media back in 2015. And so it is not the technology even if you don’t have AI. So no excuses people, then you can deploy this. All you have to do then is understand these kinds of permutations and really understand your audience, such as those personas.
00:28:50:10 – 00:29:26:10
Jon Chang
So it’s actually not necessarily convincing people up front. And it’s it’s kind of a ask for forgiveness, even though I don’t think that there’s like any kind of punishment that happens if you’re burning like hundreds of dollars over your overall budget, even if you have a really small budget, that is not a crazy amount of things to do, and you’re going to need weeks to months to transition out of your existing strategy anyway, because again, like the they’re going to these platforms are going to punish you if you just overnight throw in 700 assets and replace your current ones, they’re.
00:29:26:10 – 00:29:43:07
Ralph Burns
Not going to quite know what to do, or it’s going to take months for them to sort of figure it all out. When you first started, it sounds like there was a very heavy influencer mix to the equation. And then of course, you know, it’s doing the research for today’s show. It’s like my fitness palettes, like, oh my God, how many influencers are there out there?
00:29:43:07 – 00:30:08:13
Ralph Burns
Some of them are affiliates, some of them aren’t the couple guys who are like pissed that you hadn’t, you know, paid attention to them yet. Like, why haven’t they called me as an affiliate? But there’s so much that’s out there. So how has that shifted? Have you shifted wholesale to more paid media and social? Like how is sort of your media mix change to be able to get the types of results that we’re talking about here and ultimately build the brand?
00:30:08:15 – 00:30:39:20
Jon Chang
So that is actually a really interesting example of a brand not versed brand with performance here. So the influencer strategy has diversified really into three different camps. What we did before is we would have a large influencer like Sarah Michelle Gellar or this past year we did for years camping and and we’d have a major representation of what we’re trying to pursue with more so from a brand standpoint, and maybe try and repurpose it here and there for a little bit at performance.
00:30:39:22 – 00:31:00:15
Jon Chang
Then we had the performance side where we had mid mid-tier and mid-level influencers, where they had enough personality, they had enough of a following that we can really latch on to it. We got rid of that part. So we’re still working with larger celebrities. I think we are about to or are about to activate with like the Mormon housewives.
00:31:00:15 – 00:31:28:07
Jon Chang
And by what we’ve done is we kind of cut out that middle and instead we’re going more so on the micro side, both on performance as well as now a brand deployment. So it’s a higher volume play. So this is where our CMO, I think has done a really admirable, admirable job thinking through how we can use influencers on more of a like macro level in terms of total volume.
00:31:28:08 – 00:31:49:21
Jon Chang
We’re launching, like dozens of new influencers on this affiliate scale every single month. And each of those, then these people are a part of a longer term contract. And so they’re actually telling a story to the audience. And with that, our total amount of impressions actually compounds to. And you can only imagine what that might do to your performance media.
00:31:49:21 – 00:32:16:03
Jon Chang
If someone sees your name one, two, seven times for they actually see your ad, it’s it’s where brand comes into direct play with performance media. Like Google has said this for so long, you need X amount of touchpoints before X amount of like being seen before they like are willing to convert. Gary Vaynerchuk says it in his very old but still relevant book, jab, jab, jab, Right Hook.
00:32:16:04 – 00:32:38:16
Jon Chang
And so again, these lessons have been out there and it’s just like, don’t ignore them. These very smart people and companies are setting it. So influencer marketing and brand are brand campaigns as a whole like including CTV. These are ways where these are ways where they are seeing you in a modern context with the position that you want before they actually get that right hook or whatever.
00:32:38:16 – 00:33:07:20
Jon Chang
Gary Vee says to help convert them. Then finally, on a performance side, we use a combination of influencers, but then also actors to make our content. And so this is highly scripted. I mean, we’re not trying to fool people and we just want to make UGC content. We’re making UGC content then like stems down from the overall positioning to then like where we want them to convert at the very end.
00:33:07:21 – 00:33:29:20
Jon Chang
So this is not only full funnel, but it’s full user journey because at this point you, Ralph Burns, have been doom scrolling and you’ve seen your favorite influencer who’s maybe a little like bigger say something about My Fitness Pal and you’re like, okay, here’s that. You see two random influencers because the algo has just decided to serve this up to you.
00:33:29:20 – 00:33:49:03
Jon Chang
And we’re like, oh my gosh, these people are everywhere. And now maybe we’re bigger than you think. Like this. If you’re a startup, this is great because it’s going to make you look bigger than you actually are. And then finally you see an advertisement. And at that point you’re like, all right, all right, man, let me just like try this out, especially as we have freemium product.
00:33:49:04 – 00:34:07:01
Jon Chang
Like what? What’s it going to hurt? Go download a free app and see what it’s about. So that’s where influencer marketing has been really interesting for us and successful, but might be a good example if you just want to visualize directly how brand plays with performance media.
00:34:07:03 – 00:34:19:13
Ralph Burns
Yeah, it’s I don’t know what the number is as far as impressions go. I mean, Google says 500 old school marketers say it’s seven. I think it’s somewhere in between. I have no idea.
00:34:19:18 – 00:34:20:20
Jon Chang
Is like a small.
00:34:20:21 – 00:34:40:04
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Also to this on what your price point is. I mean, I think it’s directly correlated to the price point as a premium product. And obviously you guys have a premium subscription as well. I mean, it might be less than, you know, the $10,000 sauna people that we had here on the show a while back. So slightly different.
00:34:40:04 – 00:35:01:23
Ralph Burns
But the point is, is it seems like you’re everywhere in the algorithms right now. We’re so good at being able to zero in on what you’re most interested in. And then, of course, the paid advertising sort of piggybacks on top of that. So it’s a it’s a nice combination right now, especially with, you know, how not a TikTok and Google especially are just so dialed in with the investments that they’ve made at the AI.
00:35:02:00 – 00:35:22:21
Jon Chang
Well, oh, absolutely. So actually, here’s another example because, you know, love concrete examples here that is about to launch. We haven’t. So I’ve been talking about this NCAA thing and it’s we’ve been planning it for so long. And I was like about to back to launch. And then I’ve also been talking about measurement. So I think this can fold into it because everyone’s like we’re going to spend a bunch of money and influencers.
00:35:22:21 – 00:35:49:23
Jon Chang
What did it actually do. So we are activating a rivalry game. I’ve signed one bigger talent. I signed one bigger talent. And that is someone who’s predicted to be the upcoming number one NFL draft. So I’m super excited that team is going to play another team in Texas. So we have an Ohio team that’s going to play another team in Texas, and we have the like tier one, maybe the tier one athletes.
00:35:50:01 – 00:36:18:13
Jon Chang
That’s great. However, underneath that I am activating 300 influencers that are just sports on those campuses. And I’m holding out our paid the rest of our paid media spend from those geo locations. And so there’s two things. One, normal geo experiments. So we’ll be able to see Lyft there that’s not only just brand, but then in addition to that that is the we’re looking at like power Lyft or conversion Lyft as well.
00:36:18:15 – 00:36:39:11
Jon Chang
The second thing though, I love reading business books. And there’s one that is like so old it’s going to date me, but it was like one of the first books about how Facebook got started. And intentionally or not, they took over one campus at a time. And so I’m just thinking I was like, all right, well, this could be a way where I can make an echo chamber like each one of these influencers.
00:36:39:11 – 00:37:02:18
Jon Chang
I don’t know if they I’m not. I’m actually not buying their following. I’m buying like the ten other people that are sitting in their dorm room. So we have 150 athletes and some of them and some of them might have some more influence or whatever. But like their most the most valuable thing is them going to their team of like 30 people saying, I’m being paid for this thing isn’t so cool.
00:37:02:20 – 00:37:28:09
Jon Chang
Going back to their dorm room and talking about it. And then that is direct and measurable word of mouth within a cohort that is super hard to buy. It’s Gen Z. And then the final thing that I’m really curious is going to happen is kind of strategy before eats, where you get a bunch of college kids. Like, I think that I have never worked for them or never talked to them about this, but here’s my assumption from a business case.
00:37:28:09 – 00:37:49:21
Jon Chang
Pretty sure they probably lost money by offering so many promos on college campuses. However, when those kids go home and they talk to their friends, they’re going to be like, I can’t believe you haven’t heard of this app because everyone I know uses it. So yeah, after we’re doing this rivalry game, we’re activating 300 athletes across two different campuses that are tier three.
00:37:49:21 – 00:38:02:08
Jon Chang
And I’m going to look across Fall Break and see if we see a bump across. We see a bump in installs probably won’t be as noticeable as like maybe a decrease in total CCaC and like all these little towns.
00:38:02:08 – 00:38:04:07
Ralph Burns
So my.
00:38:04:09 – 00:38:11:23
Jon Chang
God, yeah, I’m very excited to see how it goes. But I I’m spending a ton of time on it because I really believe in the strategy.
00:38:12:01 – 00:38:23:06
Ralph Burns
Yeah. No, that’s super interesting. And so you’re going to pause your pay media in those geographies and see what your lift is sort of in your own incremental test to a certain degree.
00:38:23:08 – 00:38:35:03
Jon Chang
Exactly. And, you know, it’s actually so funny because Big Ten schools are not generally in major metropolitan areas. So we’re not even really taking a huge hit on a preference. Yeah.
00:38:35:08 – 00:39:01:00
Ralph Burns
Yeah. That’s so cool. Oh my god. Well that’s that’s interesting. Well I think that’s like next level grand plus performance. You really are measuring performance. But I mean there’s so much of the two that are intertwined there. I mean as we kind of close out here, like what would be your recommendation to how folks should start thinking about this merging of the two?
00:39:01:00 – 00:39:19:16
Ralph Burns
We’ve talked about it so much on this show in a performance way, but I’m like, you know, hey, you can go for the performance. You can get the the conversions within the next week or days. But at the same time, the benefit to that is you are building brand. So that’s the way that I’ve sort of positioned it.
00:39:19:17 – 00:39:27:21
Ralph Burns
How would you position it for folks to start thinking differently about this, as opposed to in two separate silos?
00:39:27:23 – 00:39:51:01
Jon Chang
I mean, actually the organization that I think still might do it best everywhere, and it has been like where I like learned most of my lessons, was Klarna. Amazing? CMO David Sandstrom comes from a strong brand background and then but still really believes in growth. I joined a ten year old organization and but all B2B and they were launching consumer and wanted to do it in the US.
00:39:51:01 – 00:40:13:00
Jon Chang
So my job was to launch, which is interesting as a fintech by now pay later app, and that to launch a mobile shopping app within the US. And so I went in for this interview and with him and then VP of marketing and they’re like, okay, we want one head of marketing for us. And then they hired three of us, all three final round.
00:40:13:00 – 00:40:33:01
Jon Chang
And because and they hired me for growth, one person for brand ideas and then third one for overall brand because they’re like, you know what? We actually need this trifecta. And I’ve been like, I’ve never really worked that closely with brand before. But they’re like, they’re like, I’m going to throw you all into a room and you’re going to figure this out.
00:40:33:03 – 00:40:34:11
Ralph Burns
Duke it out. Yeah.
00:40:34:13 – 00:41:01:00
Jon Chang
And I mean, there I mean, it worked out. So I think it worked out so well. We went to 20 million users and two years after launching in the US. But the crux of the strategy there, which is we wanted to find the most affordable ways to, of course, like penetrate the market. We thought about it as activating small, passionate communities one at a time.
00:41:01:00 – 00:41:23:18
Jon Chang
So we started with actually the drag community, and it even went so far as like, I mean, it went up. We did like a drag brunch. And it actually is based on some fairly thorough analyzes we did about fast fashion actually being the stickiest thing for us. Higher AOV items are like technology, but they aren’t as frequent purchases.
00:41:23:18 – 00:41:44:03
Jon Chang
But fast fashion actually is, and it’s a younger demographic that’s just going to grow. So we’re like, okay, we want habit here. They’re going to purchase more of slightly lower, but our total revenue over a year is going to be about similar. And so one there actually is math here to when it comes to brand it’s you find things that you can actually make a good play on.
00:41:44:03 – 00:42:05:08
Jon Chang
And it’s going to work with your creative which then optimizes for the algorithms. So we launched with the drag community and then the coin Corinna as becoming an influencer and making money afterwards took a look at how many people own dogs. And so for the New York Dog Parade, we hired a stylist and you can go in there for free and twin with your dog.
00:42:05:10 – 00:42:25:01
Jon Chang
After that we went. We noticed a large amount or a large percentage of women actually using the platform. And so we decided to launch a like feminist campaign. We found out on February 29th. Old like older times in the US, we’re talking about like 100 years or so. That was the only date that women were allowed to propose to men.
00:42:25:01 – 00:42:55:06
Jon Chang
So we worked with the Lady Gaga stylist and had a diamond encrusted ring that only fits on your middle finger. And so it’s like, these are not like crazy campaigns or things, but they’re based on where we would see revenue associated with habit. And then also it’s actually it’s it’s one you get a actual emotional connection when you’re looking at a small, passionate community and proving that you also care about the community.
00:42:55:07 – 00:43:15:14
Jon Chang
I mean, how again, a middle finger just like ring, you’re showing that you are passionate with them and all of that, then I know it’s like you’re asking not necessarily about performance marketing, but all of that then is timed with performance marketing, because whatever your business is, I bet that there’s a season. So we did this about every quarter.
00:43:15:14 – 00:43:37:00
Jon Chang
And when we first started, like, I mean, the US really was kind of a test. So I didn’t have as nearly as big of a budget as I do now at my fitness bell. Yet we were hitting super hard on these campaigns, and so that was my first experience, really learning how to work with brand and not. And that was a model that that I think was really critical.
00:43:37:00 – 00:43:39:14
Jon Chang
And our success and growth.
00:43:39:16 – 00:44:05:08
Ralph Burns
Well, I think that’s a really good lesson for people listening to this. It’s like that’s an example of a super persona or a micro persona that you got left from. And it’s just that concept alone. Think about your entire market. There’s it will depending on what your product is. I mean, there could be hundreds of different personas. And if you’re focused on 1 or 2, you’re probably limiting yourself to a great degree.
00:44:05:08 – 00:44:31:01
Ralph Burns
And that’s probably one of the reasons why you can’t scale and you can’t grow. I think your example here is a great example of like, go after something so specific and see that lift. It’s a good example, I think, for all of us as marketers, because we were all sort of tunnel focused, tunnel vision focused, go after a lot of the other personas, even if it’s the ones that, you know, you might only spend just a couple of hundred dollars a day on unpaid media do that test.
00:44:31:01 – 00:44:57:14
Jon Chang
So I think it applies to be to be to like as a brand, what you need to do is just prove that you care about what they care about. And if you’re like, well, here’s like this little message, I’m going to blast it. It’s it’s not going to happen. You’re just kind of throwing money into the wind. Our B2B team activated with Layer Fitzgerald and and like their field and like field marketing and the webinars and then which sounds like wait clarinet and Larry Fitzgerald.
00:44:57:14 – 00:45:15:04
Jon Chang
But no I mean we toured with him and it really resonated. And he’s like funny. So we brought entertainment along with substance to a B2B audience, which helped with a lot of handshaking and showing that our brand is competitive in the B2B space, too.
00:45:15:09 – 00:45:34:22
Ralph Burns
Yeah, that’s that’s tremendous. Well, it’s been great having you on here today. I think you’ve enlightened a lot of folks who listen to this show, or just maybe a little bit too performance minded to start thinking about sort of the bigger picture. I know you’re a keynote speaker as well, so you’re available for that. Will obviously leave your LinkedIn profile and your profiles on the show notes here over a perpetual traffic.
00:45:35:00 – 00:45:39:17
Ralph Burns
How can people get in touch with you? Specifically, how do you communicate with folks out there?
00:45:39:19 – 00:45:53:14
Jon Chang
Yeah, that’s a great question. And you should just message me on LinkedIn. That is the best way I check that regularly, and I look forward to hearing from all of you. Hit me up, flood that inbox.
00:45:53:16 – 00:45:57:13
Ralph Burns
And he’s one of the guys who actually does respond on LinkedIn. So it’s.
00:45:57:15 – 00:45:58:03
Jon Chang
We got that.
00:45:58:06 – 00:46:24:02
Ralph Burns
That’s that’s how we got connected. So. Well, Jon Chang, it’s been awesome having you on today’s show. Well, obviously we’ll leave links to how we can you can connect with Jon Chang over at Perpetual Traffic. And of course, if you’re a founder or marketing leader, watching your acquisition costs climb and can’t really grow with the old playbook and maybe want to tap into some of these things that we talked about here today, sort of from a performance and brand side.
00:46:24:03 – 00:46:45:01
Ralph Burns
You can check out your 11 over at 211, of course. So so of course wherever you listen to podcasts, we appreciate a rating and review helps us get out to a wider audience teaching people how to do this stuff the right way. And Jon Chang certainly helped us do that today. So thanks once again for coming on Perpetual Traffic.
00:46:45:03 – 00:46:49:11
Jon Chang
And thank you for having me. This has been a really wonderful time.
00:46:49:13 – 00:47:06:16
Ralph Burns
And yeah, absolutely. They always love the ending here. We never really know how to end the show because we’re just marketers just talking about marketing. We can keep talking and talking, but like I said, all the links are over in the show. Notes perpetual traffic from. Want to see this over our YouTube channel? You can check that out at Perpetual Traffic Forward.
00:47:06:18 – 00:47:12:04
Ralph Burns
So until next show everyone. See you.
